


and that is who you are

by nowordswriter (eloquentelegance)



Series: The Alphabet Soup for the Soul [1]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2013-11-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 10:36:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eloquentelegance/pseuds/nowordswriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You were never literate. You were other things though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and that is who you are

**Author's Note:**

> An ode to Jack Frost. He's a life ruiner and I'm so happy to have met him. Happy anniversary, dear boy.

You never learned to read. You never learned to write neither. You never held a pen in your hands, never struck lines on paper, never swirled ink together and made it yours - your name. No, you were never literate. 

You were other things though.

You were the fur trapper, trudging through the Canadian wilds. You followed him for a year, fascinated by the foreign words flying from his tongue. Till they landed on yours, and you learned to sing "Aloutte" in perfect harmony with his gruff, dried bark voice. You learned his "Je ne sais pas" and his "Baise moi". You memorized the bubbles of his laugh and the branches of his smile, carrying the silence of his hands long after you saw him fall asleep in the winter bitten soil.

You were the pianist's pupil, with his awkward fingers tumbling across the shell white keys. You watched him from the rafters, humming along to the haphazard notes. Your fingers mirrored his, tapping on the wood beneath you, eyes closed and imagining a stage, imagining a theatre, imagining a hall full of people who can see you, watch you. You learned his music long before his name was etched in plaques of silver and gold, before his chords echoed from every piano in the world, before he was buried in a mass grave. You kept the dark of his eyes, the grooves of his palm, and the shadows of his face painted by midnight candlelight.

You were the poet at his leisure, stuffed with turkey and soaked in wine. You listened to the tenor of his Ts, the sibilance of his Ss, mouthing the syllables with your mouth pressed against the window panes. You learned your Shakespeare, your Chaucer, your Donne from his evening recitals before the hearth. You learned his verses too, heard them spoken in parlors with his fellow poets sitting around him. It's a pity you never knew the contours of his name, never knew the shape it took in gold lettering and etched in the spines of books. But you knew the way his cheeks blushed in the frost burned gales, how his silhouette pressed heavy and thick before the fireplace, and the veins that wrapped his throat, straining against the skin.

You were the girl selling matchsticks one winter's eve, when the air hung bloated with chill. You were the boy running from home, wandering between the peeled black trees on a no moon night. You were their coffin, their graveyard, their morgue and final resting place. You walked with the outline of her lips calling out grandma and the color of his feet stuck to the soles of his shoes. You were the soldier boy in the trenches and the lady girl in the alleys. You learned the temperature of a girl-mother's tears and the decibel of a boy-father's shout. You learned the exact shade of blue that colored the sky after it snowed.

The thing that you are is lonely. The thing that you never were is alone. In all your days, and months, and years, and there were so many years, you had never once been alone. You carried pieces of them, lined the spaces of your ribs and colored the drops of your blood with memories of them. Some were nameless and others well known. All were yours and yours alone. You stole the laughter from their throats, caught the smiles in their eyes, plucked the breath from their lips when they stepped outside. You were their watcher, their keeper, their Atlas carrying the weight of their lives on your shoulders. You saw when they thought no one else was looking.

And that is who you are.


End file.
